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A number of responses (here and in DMs elsewhere) have suggested a new, casual game mode would be good for player retention. This is a really good point that I'd neglected. In fact, I played Quake 1 in a very casual setting for a few years before I even knew there was a competitive community. I mentioned this a few years ago, but there was a really cool idea for a mod that my friends had me program in Quake 1. I think it would work beautifully in Reflex as well...
Basically, it's an asymmetrical mode in which one team is defending a flag/capture point, and the attacking team is attempting to touch said point. When the attacking team does manage to touch the point, everyone on the map is killed, and the sides are swapped. Everyone starts out with all weapons and an appreciable amount of health/armor/ammo, but there are pickups on the map that respawn at an accelerated pace - mostly clustered on the defending team's side. You could give points over time to the defending team depending on how long they were able to maintain control, and have a timelimit on the map before the round is over. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNWqp5Fd5Ug is a video of it in action in Quake 1.
The awesome movement systems of Quake and Reflex allow it to be something like an obstacle course that the attackers have to traverse while being shot at by defenders. It's great fun, and the map making tools+workshop for Reflex could turn it into something pretty amazing.
Also, thanks everyone for the great discussion and ideas. <3

Duel is the problem. 1v1 has always been for the hardcore crowd, not newcomers. We already have a great casual mode in the form of ATDM. Just need to inform new players about that.
E: even if the devs changed a ton of stuff to lower the barrier to entry, I think we still wouldn't get a whole lot of new players. This may be cynical of me, but I think gameplay is secondary to marketing budget when it comes to a game's popularity. Having a research department dedicated to keeping people hooked is pretty essential as well (see: any Blizzard game).

Woo, you referenced my thread! The devs just confirmed that drop-in/drop-out functionality will be in the next update (1.1), so that will go a long way towards making ffa, instagib, atdm/CA, more accessible for new players. Can't wait!
As for teaching new players about duel, how about a well done training map that puts you in game with a bot, and slowly feeds you information about items, cycling, basic tactics, etc. A fair bit of work, but 10x better than a video.
edit: I forgot to mention - that game mode Kovaak describes sounds great

People have expressed support for Quake Champions and I know the NDA is still under effect so I can't talk too much about it, but I have serious issues about the base balance of the game. As it stands, I can't imagine any game mode providing depth due to the design limitations they have put on themselves with such tiny maximum stacks and every weapon being quite strong. The idea of separate champions with different movement physics is great and I don't mind the idea of active abilities at all, but there is no way it will succeed with hardcore audiences due to the way they are cornering themselves with the weapon/stack balance.
I have to disagree there. Reflex is the first AFPS with netcode of its kind (it can be quirky at times, but at moderate pings it is significant better than any alternative), a built-in multiplayer map editor + in-game steam workshop support (hence the 700+ maps on the workshop), and the LUA UI functionality. The game is highly responsive and has excellent visibility. Because of these reasons, I feel that Reflex is in a better position to succeed than any other game in the genre. If only we could get the right combination of gameplay changes, awesome/fun casual modes, and advertising.

Наконец-то.
I'm agree with Joe's point of view: > You can bang on about this or that but bottom line is, the only reason to play Reflex is self improvement.
But there are actually a bit more people who is able to play Reflex and improve their play. If you visit https://lichess.org/ you will find that chess player base is huge (~17k playing right now) and chess is not fun game at all & gameplay rules hadn't changed for a long time. Maybe afps genre should exist for like 1000 years to establish & be popular. So I think it's not gameplay problem at all (but it needs improvements for sure (see rockets)). I played qc a bit, and would say that every weapon in this game is op except machinegun, in reflex it's usually shaft with insane knokback. My point is to find the way to make reflex less frustrating for new people.
The problem is: There are no new players because there are no new players. To avoid this devs should implement this things below.
New players should play vs bots or new players no exceptions. Placements should be only vs new guys, not Rama.
The game should have interactive tutorial. Existing one is good, but need some new chapters about flow of duel game & maybe even about choosing right pc setup with monitor, mouse, mousepad and sensetivity for it. Kovaak's videos is only good series of tutorials right now, glad to see the link in the game at least. Should implement promeus map reflex_train in official maps & recommend it to every new player (or create the similar one). There is need to create a big alert for first launch of the game with recommendation to take complete tutorials.
BOTS BOTS BOTS. Not stupid bullshit, recreate cpm bots, they are really good. Create bots to practice when there are no people around, smart bots create smart play & understanding the flow of the game, smart play & understanding the flow of the game creates less frustration.
Weapon balance. I like "new" plasma & shotgun, but there is still a weapon which is unbalanced bad. I'm talking about rocket and its strange delay after hitting the mouse button to fire on client & creating projectile on server. I tried to explain why this is bad, but seems like community are good with it. The game forces to use shaft in 90% of fights. Need to fix rockets & nerf shaft a bit (I mean knokback). Many new players love to use rockets & don't like to use shaft.
The game should have a sign about frustration hell in competitive 1v1. Devs should start to work with casual & team modes, Reflex is bad with many players on server. New players would play casual instead duels.
MM servers. They are not ready for many players. We saw that after release, that was really bad stuff. And pls make linux version for servers (Almost 3 years with server for windows only)
Free2Play or Free Weekend to make reflex stats great again.
New maps or the transparent system of implementing new maps in map-pools. Devs should encourage map-makers, tournament organizers & so on. I watched release trailer and haven't seen nicknames of map-makers & some players, was very dissapointed.
VoIP for teammodes.
The ingame demo list.
Implemented hosting for tournaments with rank restrictions. Like gold cups, bronze cups and etc.
Ban dk / benz & develop the culture in game chat. Ban multi-accs guys (Rama pls send reflex accs to your friends). It's not fun playing vs smurfs & german angry kids.
And the last but not least, devs.. Pls believe in your product, when we see that you're improving the game with all your heart, it creates a feeling, which would not let us quit from you & your game. There was so much enthusiasm after releasing first version, even after failed kickstarter company.
The biggest part is tutorial system. But there are still so much work to do to make this game quite popular.
About Reflex competition with QuakeChampions, I think qc will increase the whole afps genre, so Reflex might have new players because of it. Reflex is a great game, but release was too early, release hype was missed for nothing.
Sorry for broken English. And yes. The game needs cyrrilic chat as well or utf8 chat. I think Asian guys don't like current ascii chat either.

I'll be brutally honest this is why I've given up on Reflex. It will never have a large enough community to support team modes or even a good 24/7 FFA server. I don't think this is fixable now. Reflex botched all the big free press it had. The initial version was released too early without good netcode. The CTF release came out with one map of questionable quality. The recent release had an opportunity to push team modes again but instead we got too many match making options to guarantee no one plays anything but duel. I feel like team modes were mostly ignored during development in favor of duel (the game balance is duel focused too). For years teams modes were broken without the ability to lock teams.
When Reflex was announced years ago I was hyped. I expected a hardcore AFPS and it is. The problem is Reflex is essentially CPM. That I was not expecting. I thought it would be a hardcore AFPS inspired by Quake/CPM but doing innovative new things. The only major gameplay innovation was item timers and let us be honest that was a debacle. The design I've heard rumors of with the stake gun sounded innovative but the general public never saw it.
At the end of the day CPM has never been popular and never will be. It was designed by committee for political purposes to appease fans of Q1-Q2-Q3 while trying to bring them together. It didn't work back then and it isn't working now. CPM has no real weaknesses but I'd also say it has no real strengths. I actually think CPM was better when it had 100 damage fast rail. At least then it had an extreme and was absolutely brutal. Then CPM ended up like QL with everything over balanced into blandess. Reflex is similar. With Diabotical and QC coming soon I'm expecting one of them will fill the team void I've been looking for and Reflex will just be a memory.
For the record I bought multiple copies and got friends to buy copies too. I ran a 2v2 league about two years ago. I more than did my part supporting and trying to make Reflex succeed but sometimes you have to acknowledge reality. While I had fun in Reflex it never had the magic I felt in QW TDM for instance. Most of that magic came from intense competitive team modes and the community around it. In PVP games players are the content and you need a critical mass of them to be sustainable.

A lot of these posts have addressed my own issues with the game. Unfortunately, to add on to this, Quake Champions being F2P might well be the nail in the coffin. I know that's pretty grim and me mentioning it might cause some backlash, but this game is coming around with betas, so Reflex needs to jump on this thread ASAP and make a lot of these posts priority. I want Reflex to win. Seriously. I don't like F2P communities, and I love Reflex's so much.
But whether QC is successful or not doesn't even matter. It's a huge; it's the foundation of this type of game, and it's going to be F2P. Now those that don't like the game might very well find Reflex, but then they need to be willing to shell out $10 and getting their ass kicked in duels, because damn if they can find any server populated outside of duels. They can figure that out within the 2 hour refund period in steam, and that's not OK. I actually did that the first time I played the game, and then I bought it again and played for 30+ more hours.
My personal problem is that in Reflex, duels is the (seemingly) sole focus. The duel games going on are right there on the front page ready to be watched. All the other game modes are hardly touched, and yet, those are my jams: e.g: insta gib and ctf. I don't know if it's me being on the west coast, but I can't find anything other than duels, and I'm not interested in getting my ass beat 100% of the time by those who spend MONTHS practicing movement. I don't mind spending a couple of days, but months? No, I'm good. Personally, the movement does not feel intuitive and when I started to break those bad habits, the movement system still seemed too damn hard to master. If it didn't take so long to feel natural, then I'd be all over it. And those that practiced it for long stretches are people in low ranks! I actually got to silver by losing every duel match, which I found hilarious.
I just want to be able to improve by playing the game. Not by having to practice mechanics outside of the actual game. Those that want to be competitive will do that sort of thing, because to be competitive is doing a lot of that in any game. In this game it just feels mandatory, and that's not fun to me. In the end, there's a giant wall in front of this game to many new players, and I'm afraid time is running out if it's not brought down soon.

Heh the problem is i swear to god on 99% only the complicated movement. I have not much quake background, i played a lot a lot unreal back in days, then doom cs 1.5. If you make the movement more easier somehow. You got the player base probably. Like i swear its not really fun practice some dumb jumps for hours. People want play and frag, kill . Movement is 99% in this game. Everyone can aim nowadays. Tell w/e you want about some strategies but the movement is everything here. And i told before, doing some dumb jumps for bolts for hours when you miss the pad by centimeters etc, is just dumb. You got later on somehow. But make the jump succesful on 99% all time is maybe 150 hours of reflex. 150 hours of just stress, nervous, and kill ratio 0.001, This is not fun -_-. We need just some good settings for people which want just play something new, with great netcode, different graphics. And then ofc have pure vanilla settings for "stuff". This is really not 2000 when ppl just grinded one game 14 hours a day to being best. People nowadays play a lot games. OW, csgo, h1z1, quake etc...

I don't think that making the game more accessible for new players would help very much if we overdo it too much. What happens is that people will pick up this game, get into it a bit, and then they realize that it really just isn't their thing. I know that when I started playing this game, even though I sucked dick and got destroyed by any decent player, I didn't just give up with the idea that this game is stupid. I wanted to get better, so I kept playing. This is something that a lot of people just don't have the time and/or motivation to do.
The truth is that we're playing an extremely niche genre of game. Almost all of the disappearing new players don't just stop playing because it's not holding their hand enough, it's just that ultimately, they don't like this type of game. No amount of hand-holding is going to change that.
In fact, it's possible that by adding so many hand holding features, the target audience that this game goes for will actually get pushed away. I know I nearly stopped playing back in early access when item timers were default on, simply because I didn't like how much it took one of the skill factors out of the game.
(though I do agree that some things should not be hard to figure out, like the magic number of RA you can have max to pick up a YA/GA)

This has been underappreciated so far, imo. One big problem for new players is that they do not understand why they are losing. They focus on the fights, and wonder why they hit 2 direct rockets and still die, they try to fight better, but fighting better actually doesn't help them either. Picking up a red armor is so important, it should start all kinds of fireworks on the HUD and on the headphones to make absolutely sure that the player does understand what happened and that he fucked up, when he let the opponent snatch all the juicy stuff (and not when he had a decent fight that he had no chance in winning, because he was completely out-armored).
Additionally, having MH/RA positions visible through walls at all times could be an effective change, that doesn't change the gameplay for seasoned players at all, while helping newbies a lot.

I'm hoping the devs would like to try a different system for quick play FFA games - I think it would be ideal to keep an FFA game going and let people join soon in. I really enjoy FFA and play it whenever I see a game going on, and I've tried playing FFA and instagib games using the new MM system - it is only ever three people (which is fine, that's a playerbase thing for now). The other night I had a three player FFA game, and afterwards we were all in the lobby afterwards (that is, the same server)... but we couldn't ready up to play again, and we couldn't vote for mutators.
I'd like to see how it would go if there is just an EU FFA game going on at any one time, like an official server, that people can quickly join if they go through the quick play option. Make it clear that it isn't ranked and there will be a big difference in player skill if necesssary, but I don't think people mind to be honest. I'd rather play with 7 other players and be at the bottom of the scoreboard than I would play with just two other players. The MM system is fantastic for duels and doubles and so on, but FFA and instagib, I think, need a different approach.
FFA is much, much more accessible than other modes for casuals and beginners, and is in fact a good introduction to the game mechanics, movement, weapons, aim, items and so on. I quite literally did this when I first started playing the game. It was only later on that I started to get interested in the 1v1 game. Hopefully the devs have statistics for who queues for what, and maybe they'll see people queuing for FFA and not getting a game for a long time.
So yeah, discuss? This is something I am a little concerned about right now.

Reflex was just released last month and enjoyed a small population boom that took the concurrent users and multiplied it by 2-3. It was great until something like 90% of the newer players stopped playing. So we must ask ourselves why the population tanked back to pre-release levels already.
Was it the community? No, I highly doubt that. The majority of us have been very welcoming and took time to show newer players what the game has to offer. Parkourstation and reflextrain saw a lot of play time on public servers. Even in duels, veterans stopped and explained why they were surviving through multiple direct rockets to the face, toned down their game, and let newcomers grab some armors. Bringing people to the official discord has gone pretty well too. I'd love it if this was a success story and I was only here to report these facts...
So why didn't people stick with the game? To use a metaphor, I think it's that new players see a pit of depth for how good you could possibly be at reflex, but there are no lights pointed down there. There is nothing that illuminates why prime overlords can convincingly beat overlords, who can stomp on diamonds, who can dominate platinums, who can destroy... All the way down to bronze. As we all know, combat skills don't define everything in this game, but that is the only thing that is outwardly obvious before a new player buys the game. And even after they have played for a week, they are aware movement plays a big part, but the depths of strategy are still a murky black pit that makes no sense to them.
Compared to Overwatch, it's really obvious that depth in the game (outside of combat skills) comes from finding the right times to use your abilities and coordinating with teammates. You don't go into the game without knowing what you eventually need to improve upon. In Reflex, so many people bought the game and quit before they even knew how to improve.
There is an old video that described the ways in which Mega Man and Mega Man X were amazing games. The tl;dw: is that the games avoided explicitly telling people what to do because the mechanics of the game were revealed naturally while forcing the player to recognize what was going on, and mechanics that didn't work well in earlier games were removed in later games. This video brings home a really good point to me: my Reflex tutorials shouldn't need to exist. At least 90% of what I say in my tutorials should be forced on the player or made much more transparent. New players shouldn't be forced to listen to me talk - the game should make the important aspects completely obvious through the player exploring the game.
This is why I thought item timers were a step in the right direction - it enhances mechanic transparency. As we observed, the more hardcore players fought against it because it diminished known strategic depth. It wasn't the ideal solution, and I'm willing to admit that. But it's still painfully clear that something needs to change with the fundamental gameplay of Reflex, and it won't be easy. I have two proposed changes we could try out, and I'm curious if anyone can poke holes in them. I'm also interested in other ideas people might have.
Proposed change 1: bring back item timers in competitive modes, but make them unreliable. A mechanic could be introduced where if you shoot at an item that is not yet respawned, it adds or subtracts time from the respawning item (perhaps to a max of 5 seconds). Item timer widgets could represent what the unmodified time would be, and players could throw off timing by hand. Maybe you could tweak this idea and make it so the last person/team to collect the armor adds time to respawn by shooting it, and others subtract time by shooting it (or vice versa).
To accommodate new players, you'd want to clearly show that respawn time is being changed by their actions with "-1 second" popping out of the item colored according to the action, and a default UI widget like apheleon's timer timeline with visual uncertainty (instead of discrete red armor on the time line, a red armor on a bar that extends to the possible ranges) would go a long way to help.
Or...
Proposed change 2: all armors respawn at :00 and :30 on the clock. Other items keep their existing respawn properties. An additional benefit to this drastic change is that it removes the full lock armor cycle state of control, which means small skill differences will be less likely to result in huge score differences.
With armor cycling removed, positioning yourself between multiple armors and timing your attacks appropriately become a stronger part of the game's higher end strategy. A simple but prominent UI widget showing time until all armors respawn would go a long way to teach new players what they need to focus on.
I know #2 is harder to get buy-in from older players, but I want you guys to think seriously on it. We need to community to grow. I think #1 might not take it far enough. Perhaps #1 along with other changes to help make the game's important mechanics more transparent world be ideal, but I'd really like to try out things that make the game more approachable.
I also have a list of changes I'd recommend to the game's tutorial system, but that is less important than gameplay changes at this point.

Some system with likes and dislikes in kind of "wise", "cute" and "fag". Or ESEA karma system. So if u all time raging and shittalking - u will fired out from MM for a while (but also must be counter-system for prevent fake dislikes). Probably with additional rating and prizes for that.

Netcode is good -> yes.
Map editor is good? Yes and No. Technically...yes, but in reality those 700+ on the WS you are mentioning are pointless and a big reason WHY there are so many utterly useless maps is because of how accessible the editor is. Is it good? What's the networth here?
LUA functionality ... personally i think a highly (!!) customizable UI is highly overrated and the whole LUA stuff has brought in issues which shouldn't even be there and the truly useful widgets ... let's just say: they should be native in the game anyways.
The engine is great...and yes it has good visibility. Visibility that comes with a trade-off ...which is the art-style... which limits the games customizability. I think we can both agree that QC is miles ahead in that regard, but ofc Bethesda/ID has way more resources to work with.
Reflex does have a good foundation .... but it also comes with a questionable execution and no marketing budget, as it seems.
The real question is: do we think Reflex can get bigger, just by doing gameplay changes? I'd honestly say... no. At least not by an amount worth mentioning.
PERSONALLY.... i'd totally vote +1 for a duel+team-mode only f2p version of Reflex. F2P often sounds like the last resort of a "failed" indie-game... but let's be honest: it's not far away*.
Regards
*i'm not saying Reflex failed.... but if it wants to grow larger, it failed. If 100 concurrent players and a nearly dead competitive scene is considered a success, fine.

I've already addressed these issues but maybe I wasn't being specific enough but to put it quite simply there is a learning curve to just being able to play Duels "casually" especially considering I'd say roughly 95% of FPS players nowadays on Steam haven't touched an Arena Shooter and or have shown any interest in playing them because AFPS games like Quake have always been considered hardcore. To just be able to play Duel at a competent level you need to learn to move faster than 500ups, use weapons correctly, and have at least an understanding of what Armor cycling is... to the newer player this seems tedious and boring for just being able to play the game. The reason why Reflex needs more objective based team game modes is because the more casual audience that will fuel this game will get a sense of accomplishment out of fragging their opponent and capturing objectives. Can map makers please make maps for CTF and KovaaK's Attack/Defend idea? I feel as if we all acknowledge the fact that Reflex needs to change up a bit to gain any sort of audience but we're all pulling in different directions half the time. So while the game is still new, let's make up our minds before game dies out, aight?

As a relatively new player to the genre (especially trying to be good), and as someone who hasn't played in a few weeks, frustration with my own skill/lack thereof is a major reason why I'm hesitant to start the game (the game crashing Steam then not actually launching doesn't help, admittedly). I like to think I can aim, but Reflex loves showing me I can't. However, I don't think core mechanics need to be changed.
I think the best way to help new players besides more new players to fight against (which isn't something the devs can do) is proper education. As someone else said, the tiered armor thing is huge, but the in-game tutorial doesn't do a great job of making sure the player knows that, and not every player wants to sit through Kovaak's excellent tutorial series that highlights literally everything you need to know to start playing the game.
I think the tutorial could be dramatically improved by having a pop-up appear in the training course when you pick up, say, a Green Armor, which tells the player "Hey, this absorbs 50% of incoming damage, and maxes out at 100 armor points", then hit them with a direct rocket to illustrate that. For weapons, it could show the damage and rate of fire, and for the Mega, it could show how quickly damage decays, and when the timer on the Mega restarts. It's very easy to ignore the buttons that show that information in the tutorial, which means players are left clueless. It could also help to force players to complete part of the tutorial (through items and weapons) before allowing them to play competitive matches.

You guys too focusing on armours or some another specified aspects but missing main. Main - is human focus possibilities is heavy limited.
New player need to keep focusing for thinking about witch weapon he have right now, where he is, how healthy he is, where to find another weapon, how to move, ect. and additionally he need to think what think about all that his opponent and how to play against that.
Main difference between new and top player is how many stuff he can focus on same time. Actually, number is near same (7 +/- 2), but in 1 of that runtime memory cell top player has much more information than new. And to get that stuff compressed need training, and if start count of stuff would be not high and increasing by 1 part of game stuff and after previous gets compressed - learning process will be much faster.
So, question not in changing armour system (or any another aspect), question on total removing that for new player.
Put them to play special simplified maps with only 3-4 main weapons, then add 1 major item with timer, then some bit harder maps with new movement aspects ect.
Question where to get players for this training ladder - "simply" BOTS.
Also all that must be obviously as some good UI system.
Like new player launching reflex for first time, he has blocked competitive mods until he finish that interactive tutorial, he has 1 big button, like New game that instantly put him on server where he getting info about basic keyboard/mouse/hud configuration, then info about few basics aspects like simple w/a/d/s/jump/crouch movement, and 3-4 main weapons and instantly getting fight with bot, after explanation about some few another aspects like armours, half-advanced movement knowledge...
Would be great to have it as some "single player" story, with voice actors, some story, video-frames with examples. And for finishing major parts player gets some cosmetics.
I think for professional developers nothing hard to found good solution oneself, question do reflex devs have resources and priorities and motivation.
Sum up: protection from veterans, step-by-step 1 game aspect tutorial and right after match with bot, fancy UI and some intrigue in process time.

I've always thought the tiered armor system is in a way weird (Just think about the number you have to get down to pick up YAs or GAs, it's odd)
I think there are some visual changes you could make the whole system more intuitive without changing anything in-game.
For example, when you walk over an ammo box and you have full ammo for that specific type, have something that pops up flashing near the weapon bar saying "MAX AMMO"
You could possibly do the same with the armor bar, flashing the amount you need to be at to be able to pick up the armor you're standing on.
Another change I've thought about for a while is properly implemented 3d item timers (yes even in competitive) that only show up when you're fairly close to an item and they don't show seconds but more inaccurate chunks. (think pie timers)

There are a two distinct forces at work that influence player retention in regards to competitive games.
First, reduce frustration.
Second, feedback.
There are two pieces that make up Reflex (and one that connects them).
- -- The physical manipulation of the character in the game (moving and aiming) and how you decide to aim and move in the moment (dodging, preferring) . – I call this Kinesthetics
- -- Using/abusing the map, weapon control, armor control – I call this Meta
- --The ability to create a plan and execute on Meta, using Kinesthetics – I call this Flow
Notice the player has full control over kinesthetics. This means they have 100% feedback on what they do. This results in low frustration. So long as the player knows of the existence of bunnyhopping, if they see someone bunnyhopping better than them, they understand that they can/would also bunnyhop that well and are not likely to be frustrated, since they have feedback.
Notice the player has no control over the Metagame. They cannot see the timers, the enemy stack, the good rail angels, the perfect moves to make in the early game based on spawns. This is low feedback, which increases frustration.
To talk about retention is to talk about the new player experience. For a new player, the goal is to play the game. By playing the game, you learn the game at the same time. To start to play Reflex, you MUST have Kinesthetics, but you do not need Meta. It is assumed you have a mouse and keyboard and know how to shoot a gun, but it is not assumed you already know how to play Reflex before you play Reflex.
So then, to play Reflex (and by consequence, learn reflex), players need to be able to focus on doing the thing they already know how to do (Kinesthetics) while not focusing on Meta. Players use Kinesthetics as a lens to explore the game.
If the player where to attempt to immediately focus on Meta, they would not be playing the game. Instead, they would be hitting alt+f4 and pulling up a wiki, reading, and still not fully understand anything since they still haven’t played the game.
If we want to talk about how a new player should learn, we need to understand where they are going. What is the difference between the worst and the best players, and why is there such a dynamic range of skill as described by Meowgli and Kovaak.
Between kinesthetic and Meta, which has the largest impact? I’m afraid you will have to take my word for it, but Meta is responsible for the stratification of the player base, not Kinesthetics. (As far as the impact of Meta, Kinesthetics and Flow at different skill brackets, I could go into more detail about their relative importance at various levels, but I would like to continue on to solutions for new player learning.) I feel that Meta is least important for Top Level Players v. Top Level Players, second to Flow, then kinesthetic at the top (I could write more on this).
For Low Level Player v. Low Level Player, the list is inverted. (When I say it’s important, I mean that time spent focusing on improving that aspect of their play results in the highest amount of skill bracket return)
Moving all the way back to frustration, eventually the matchmaking system will create a match where one player will come out as the winner and the other will lose. During that game, it’s important to minimize frustration. As discussed, the main source of frustration is Meta.
I’m going to start wrapping ups since I’m super tired.
Timers as a learning tool give so much to new players and take little to nothing away from high level players when against lower level players. My solution would be to give timers to the lower mmr players, or players likely to lose the match. (Im not sure how Reflexes mmr system works exatly, but as a mid plat, give timers to anyone in gold.) But, as you get higher in rank, the handicap window shrinks, so that at a certain point, two diamonds would never see timers against each other.
This increases the skill floor.
Also, remove Casual Duels.
- -- People only go to casual when competitive doesn’t give them what they want
- --It’s a competitive game, so if competitive doesn’t give them what they want, then something is fucked up
- -- (more reasons related to feedback point)

I think no matter how transparent the game is it won't take off because it's lacking the social aspect. The only somewhat popular 1v1 games i can think of are fighting games and those can easily be played with two people on one console. Having a friend to play with is what keeps people from quitting when the game gets frustrating. How to fix that i don't know, CTF and TDM could be pushed more but neither of those modes seems particularly good for competition, or at least not as good as duel.

So, some background on me before I go into a rant about the game. Reflex was my first fps after a long run an rts stint reaching GM in SC2:WoL and a moderate level in wc3 Dota and dota2.
Now, understanding my competitive background I must say that Reflex is the most brutal ego crusher ever created. Even in sc2 where ladder anxiety is a hot topic, you could blame cheese or the game balance for your loss.
Reflex's strong suit is also its demise: it is extremely frank when expressing skill disparities. It is so thoughroughly skill based that coming in you either get your ego smashed to shit in the process of learning and leave, or push through it and are invested.
The game forces a decision between scaling the learning cliff under hot oil being poured on your ego, or leaving.
Noone wants to be shown how ineffective they are, but truly skill based games do a wonderful job of forcing this realization. In some players this fuels a drive to be the best - but to others it is a turn off. No matter how well your matchmaking works or how well your tutorials teach skills, the basic design is heartless.
As much as I'd hate to see it happen, the only hope I see for the game is a normalization of skills involved. I'm hesitant to use that word because few know what I mean by it. 'Normalization by peaks' in music takes a track with large dynamic variance (amplitude, in this analogy skill) analyzes the highest amplitude and reduces the dynamic range by bringing up the volume of lower amplitudes, compressing the difference between the loudest and quietest amplitudes. But still maintaining the highest amplitude. (limited reduction in skill cap) In reflex this would require the old blood to give up elements that raise the barrier of entry.
The difficult thing is normalizing 'just enough' so that the better player will still win a majority of their matches. But so that any player can enjoy their games at any skill level.
The jist of what I'm saying is that we have to lower the skill floor so that anyone can duel anyone and have fun-without squashing the dynamic range between high and low skill too much.
Let's look at the world's most popular sport football, the barrier of entry is nearly nonexistent. Think about the difference between a pro footballer and a seasoned veteran and a first timer - they are at distinctly different experience levels, but the first timer can see and appreciate how the two are better than him. In playing with them he can see the possibility of reaching there with hard work, after all they are only human, there's a limit to how superior you can be, even when the skill cap is limitless. A footballer can always get an edge over another player, but the total gap between him and the first timer stays pretty much constant. The issue with reflex is that the skill gap from a new player to a week old player has the dynamic skill range of the entire existing pro football scene, and that gap compounds upward seemingly infinitely (from a new players perspective) and continues to grow as long as veterans keep playing.
For simply competing this is great because you get to see a defined 'best player' by visible margins, but when trying to bring players into an entrenched skill climb to infinity the dynamic skill gap is simply too large to sustain a population that isn't there to git gud.
TLDR: raise skill floor so that the distance between the best players in the world and the worst is a fathomable margin. Focus game less on mechanics to taper skill creep. Destroy the learning cliff and generally enforce diminishing mechanical returns at a certain point.Percentile differences in apparent skill rather than orders of magnitude.
FYI I don't think it's possible in the current ecosystem. But I think it is definitely possible to lower the barrier of entry, improve newbie effectiveness and keep a sufficiently high skill ceiling.

This does indeed need to be talked about. The statistics clearly show that we had new players come in on release and the majority of them seem to have now dropped the game, which is most unfortunate. Apart from the vicious cycle that is the relatively low playerbase, I can't help but feel that this largely stems from the hidden mechanics of the game that are not exposed to the newcomer. To me, the problem is conveying that information concisely and preferably in a fun way to new players. I'm not sure I care for the idea of changing the mechanics at all.
I'd like to consider myself one of the many players in the community who made an effort to answer questions from new players, checked the #newbies channel, spent time with players in servers etc etc; something I've always done. And what I remember from that is thinking just how much information I had to convey and type, and just how repetitive it got. Frankly I feel like a well produced 3-5 minute video for new players to watch would be enough to convey a /lot/ of information. Ideally it should be done in game but that is just not feasible, I think. There's so much to learn.. Perhaps it could be done via training mode but it would need a lot more dev time.
Regarding item timers, I agree that they are a good way for new players to learn the game and understand item timings. Doesn't the casual ruleset solve this? I guess the problem there is that competitive modes (for matchmaking) have many more players. But I have seen new players play casual duels on stream.
Certainly the currently community training section could be more prominent in the main menu. Ramagan's video guide to duel is very well done I think, he's put the effort into editing it well and so on, and is relatively concise. That playlist should be in there somewhere.
T'is a thorny issue indeed, I look forward to the discussion! I have to say, after considerable thought and with all due respect, I really don't like either of KovaaK's proposed changes. #1 seems too convoluted to me and not fun at all, #2 is actually more tolerable but i don't think it solves anything. You could still cycle armours, and the mechanic isn't obvious.
It is kinda like chess I suppose. There's no real substitute but to put the time in and learn the mechanics before you can really enjoy the game. I'm going to stop now before I ramble on. I hope I don't sound negative. My gut feeling is just that game mechanics need to be introduced and explained to new players in a much better way. Right now a player has no choice but to seek help from the community and watch videos. An official video would be a good thing I think.